"The
Wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with
the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
together; and a little child shall lead them"
Isaiah 11:6

THE
PROPHET

What's
your mental image of a prophet? For many of us, it's a
caricature of a weather-worn man with long hair and a beard, wearing
sandals and a robe, and carrying a placard that reads something like
this: "Repent
and be saved! Judgment is coming!"

Well, there is some
validity to that stereotype. The most familiar prophets are
those introduced into our language from the biblical
narrative-serious men of the wilderness who probably did wear a robe
and sandals.

But what about their
message? WARNING
definitely was the key word. Like many of the other prophets of
the Bible, Isaiah preached a message of repentance, judgment, and
reconciliation. The reason that virtually all true prophets
preached a similar message is that they were sent by God to WARN
about danger on the horizon.

Compassion and
indictment don't sound like compatible terms. But consider
their more simple expression: love and justice. Understood in
those terms, they begin to come into balance. Isaiah indicated
their balance and their significance when he wrote, "In
love a throne will be established; in faithfulness a man will sit on
it-One from the house of David-One who in judging seeks justice and
speeds the cause of righteousness"(Isaiah
16:5).

This verse gives us a
handle on the book of Isaiah. It shows us that this is a
prophecy from a God who cares enough for His people to be their judge
and unbelievable as it may seem-even provide for them a Savior.
This Savior from "the
house of David"
would eventually bear the entire judgment for their rebellion and
disobedience. God didn't turn His back and walk away from a
rebellious humanity. "in
love"
He judges and "speeds
the cause of righteousness."
How the world needs to know that God loves enough to warn about real danger!

As you consider what
Isaiah said about our compassionate God, keep in mind that love and
justice are at the heart of all the promises God asked Isaiah to lay
before His people. The promises of due punishment for rebellion
and disobedience and the promises of eternal peace for repentance
both proceed from the same loving heart of God.

Love
and justice are at the heart of the promises of God.

Throughout the book of
Isaiah there are two ways set before mankind: the way of truth, life,
and light; and the way of deception, death, and darkness. Our
loving Creator, however, pleads with us to choose the way of
life. And His message, carried by His prophets, has always been
the same: "Repent,
turn to God, and be saved." This
message is even evident in Isaiah's name, which in Hebrew means "the
Lord saves."
That is also the meaning of the name "Jesus"
in Greek. So it's no surprise to find that lsaiah's book is
filled with prophecy about Jesus.

Isaiah is one of the
most important voices of the Old Testament. This is a book
about a God who promises not to turn His back on His people if they
will not turn their backs on Him.

KNOWING
GOD THROUGH THE PROPHET ISAIAH

Isaiah expressed the
promises and warnings of God to the people of Judah for close to 50
years-from about 740 BC to nearly 690 BC. A king by the name of
Uzziah was in power when Isaiah began his ministry, and under this
good king the nation enjoyed generally peaceful and prosperous
times. But the spiritual decline that began during the closing
years of his rule accelerated under his successors. God
responded with humiliating military defeats and economic distress.

A history of the times
does not make pleasant reading. The society of Judah was marked
by terrible injustices as the rich and powerful exploited the
poor. Immorality was rampant as the people-in spite of lsaiah's
impassioned messages and the evidences of God's
displeasure-increasingly adopted the corrupt practices of pagan
idolatry. Meanwhile, the unbelievably cruel Assyrians and
Babylonians brought suffering, death, and devastation as they invaded
the land. In both Judah and her enemy nations, the dark side of
the human race was on full display.

We may think that our
advances in scientific knowledge and technology have made us morally
superior to the people of lsaiah's day. Some of us view
ourselves as above pagan beliefs and practices. But isn't it
possible that people today are just as proud, selfish, and cruel as
the ancients? We may be shocked at what the Assyrians and
Babylonians did to their enemies. But we must remind ourselves
of the evils of our own times. The Nazis slaughtered more than
six million Jews, and millions more from other than six million Jews,
and millions more from other ethnic groups. Regimes in China
and Russia have brought about the death of more than one hundred
million people. Today, Christians in Indonesia, Ethiopia,
Nigeria, Pakistan, India and other countries are being tortured and
killed by the thousands. "Official"
and unofficial ethnic cleansing continues unabated all over the world.

Many of us who live in
prospering countries are wasting our non-renewable resources, fouling
our air and water, and ignoring the fact that one-third of us are
overfed while two-thirds live in hunger and squalor. It's not
uncommon for us to be more concerned with improving our own living
conditions than in making sacrifices to improve the lives of the poor
and oppressed.

Human nature hasn't
really changed since the time of Isaiah. And neither has
God. He is still the God we meet in this prophetic book written
some 2,700 years ago. He is still the One who cares for those
who have not yet discovered that real satisfaction and peace of mind
are not found by living for ourselves. Real satisfaction is
found by learning from our God how to live for the needs and for the
good of others.

Isaiah painted a
portrait of the unchanging God by using four descriptive titles.
These will serve as the outline for this article:

(1) The Holy One Of Israel(2) The Maker-Creator(3) The Lord Almighty(4) The Savior-Redeemer

We'll find that these
descriptive names have as much significance for us today as they did
when the inspired prophet used them.

THE
HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL

Isaiah opens his book
with five summary chapters in which he introduces his readers to the "Holy
One of Israel,"
a term he uses 25 times. The prophet first views the "Holy
One"
as that surpassingly awesome being whose greatness and moral goodness
is beyond our human comprehension. Limited as we are by time
and space, how can we grasp the concept of His eternal self-existence
and simultaneous presence everywhere in His universe? Living as
we do in an ever-changing world, how can we conceive of a being who
always remains the same? Existing as we do with a mixture of
good and evil within ourselves and everything around us, how can we
understand absolute moral integrity?

The
Holy One of Israel, whose greatness and perfection are beyond our
understanding, is knowable and near.

Yet this Holy One of
Israel, whose greatness and perfection are beyond our understanding,
is knowable and near. Isaiah presents Him as reaching down to
us, making Himself known to us, telling us what He expects from us,
and relating with us when we humbly trust Him. He is knowable,
near, and available. The dual truth of God's transcendence (not
bound by time and space)
and immanence (everywhere
present)
is expressed beautifully in Isaiah
57:15. "This
is what the high and lofty One says-He who lives forever, whose name
is holy: I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is
contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and
to revive the heart of the contrite. "

Consider now two
aspects of the Holy One of Israel as they are developed by Isaiah.

The
Holy One Of Israel As Exalted And Unapproachable(Isaiah
6:1-7).
When good king Uzziah died after a long rule of 52 years, God gave
young Isaiah a vision in which He revealed something of what it means
for Him to be called the Holy One, the one being in all the universe
who is incomprehensible and uncompromised in His greatness and moral goodness.

I saw the Lord seated
on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the
temple. Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings
they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with
two they were flying. And they were calling to one another. "Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His
glory. At the sound of their voices the doorposts and
thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke"(Isaiah
6:1-4).

Isaiah was overwhelmed
at the sight of the angelic beings covering their faces to shield
their eyes from the blinding brightness of the throne and the sound
of their chant. He was afraid he was going to die on the spot
and was filled with a profound sense of his own sinfulness and that
of his nation: "Woe
to me!" I cried, I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean
lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have
seen the King, the Lord Almighty"(Isaiah
6:5).

In the Bible, those
who have been given a vision of God's majesty always react with awe
and fear because they are overcome with a realization of their
weakness, their smallness, and their sinfulness: (Job
42:4-6), (Daniel 10:7-19),
Saul of Tarsus (Acts
9), John (Rev.
1:9-18).
And these were only visions!

No human has ever seen
the unveiled glory of God:"God,
the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who
alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one
has seen or can see. To Him be honor and might forever. Amen"(I
Tim. 6.15-16).

No wonder even the
most godly people experience a mingling of eager anticipation and
uneasy apprehension at the thought of meeting God on the other side
of death! How fitting are the words of Hebrews
12:28-29, "Let
us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and
awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

The
Holy One Of Israel As Near And Relevant(Isaiah
1:1-5:30).
As noted earlier, the "high
and lofty One"
not only lives in "a
high and holy place,"
but He is also "with
him who is contrite and lowly in spirit"(Isaiah
57:15).
He is not only the Holy One, He is the Holy One of Israel. He
is near at hand, a God who is involved in the affairs of earth.
He has revealed His will to mankind, holds people responsible for
obeying it, and acts in judgment when they rebel.

The
Prophet's Indictment.
The first five chapters of the book of Isaiah summarize the situation
in Judah during the years after the vision of chapter 6. They vividly
portray God's nearness and relevance as the nation's Lawgiver and
Judge. In the first chapter, the prophet acts out the role of a
prosecuting attorney, calling all the inhabitants of the universe to
listen to his indictment of the citizens of Judah: "Hear,
0 heavens! Listen, 0 earth! For the Lord has spoken: I
reared children and brought them UP, but they have rebelled against
Me....Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt .... They have
forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and
turned their backs on Him"
(Isaiah 1:2,4).

God had been a Father
to the descendants of Abraham. He had brought them into
existence through the miraculous birth of Isaac. The Israelites
were His special people. But they had turned away from Him to
worship the false gods of their neighbors. As a result, the ten
northern tribes had already been taken into captivity by the
Assyrians. And now the citizens of Judah (the
two remaining tribes)
were ripe for a similar fate. They too were rebellious children
worshiping pagan deities.

In fact, their
rebellion and stubborn disobedience was already bringing God's anger
on them. In Isaiah
1:5-8 the
prophet describes the nation as resembling a person covered with
loathsome bruises and sores. He says that her cities were
burned by enemy invaders, and declares that "the
daughter of Zion"(Jerusalem)
stood helpless before the Assyrian armies, like a frail "hut
in a field of melons."

The remainder of the
first five
chapters
continues to focus on God's role as Law-giver and Judge of the
descendants of Abraham. But scattered throughout the rest of
the book are reminders that God is also the Lawgiver and Judge of the
nations. The judgments of chapters
13-23 are
pronounced on Assyria, Babylon, Philistia, Moab, Syria, Cush, Edom,
Egypt, Arabia, and Phoenicia for their sins, and further references
to the wrath of the Holy One of Israel appear throughout the entire book.

Although God is beyond
our comprehension, He is not a distant deity. He is near at
hand, revealing Him-self and His will. He knows every thought
and observes every act of every person. And He responds in
judgment or mercy.

The
People's Rejection.
Although most people believe in the supernatural and in some kind of
continued existence after death, a much smaller percentage accept the
idea of a personal God who has established moral standards.
Many in our day view God as an impersonal force or intelligence.
And a large number who think of Him in personal terms place little
value on the Scriptures. They see Him as a benevolent being who
makes tolerance the ultimate virtue. Even atheists and
agnostics have no quarrel with those who view God this way or speak
of Him as an impersonal force or intelligence. What they
indignantly reject is belief in a God who tells us how to live.

Our tendency to reject
the God who made us for Himself is the message of the whole
Bible. In Romans
1:18-32,
Paul declared that mankind's downward progression from worship of
false gods into self-destruction began when people who knew God "neither
glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him"(Romans
1:21). We
acknowledge God as God when we show how thankful we are for all that
He has done for us. Yet to be thankful is to acknowledge that
we owe Him our lives.

Exodus
32 tells
us how the Israelites, shortly after God had miraculously delivered
them from slavery in Egypt and given them the awesome revelation of
Himself at Mt. Sinai, used the brief absence of Moses as an
occasion to make a golden calf and engage in the sensual Canaanite
worship of Baal.

In lsaiah's day, the
wealthy and influential citizens of Judah were bringing some of the
pagan practices of their neighbors into their worship. Isaiah
1:10-2
portrays God declaring that He detests their religion because they
are using it as a cover for the harm they are doing to one
another. He warns them that unless they change their ways, He
will turn a deaf ear to their prayers. Then He pleads with them
to change their thinking and their ways so that He can pour out His
mercy on them.

This pattern of dire
warning and gracious invitation continues throughout the book of
Isaiah. But the national leaders, living in luxury and feeling
secure in spite of the plight of the nation as described in chapter
1,
continued to make and worship idols. They responded to Isaiah's
warnings with the mock request,
"Let God hurry, let Him hasten His work so we may see it"(Isaiah
5:19).
This aroused the anger of the prophet and led him to use scathing
satire and searing sarcasm to highlight the absurdity of what they
were doing. In the process, he also stated the obvious-that an
idol is something made by a craftsman and is so lifeless that it must
be designed so it "will
not topple"(Isaiah
40:18-20).
Instead of worshiping the eternal living God who is "Israel's
King and Redeemer,"
they made idols in the form of man and bowed down before lifeless
objects that could neither hear nor see nor think
(Isaiah 44:6-20).

All of us are inclined
to ignore the "Holy
One of Israel"
and substitute a god of our own making. For example, we are
prone to worship:

* The material things,
selfish pleasures, business and political ambitions we crave more
than God, which are just as much idols as the material objects
worshiped by the ancients.

* An impersonal force
that won't bother us with rules of conduct nor correct us when we do
wrong, but also cannot help us or give us hope

*A conjured-up
personal but distant God who doesn't communicate with us and is
indifferent to our conduct.

The actions of
Israel's God are not surprising when we remember that the laws for
life given by this Holy One are not the product of arbitrary
decisions on His part. He didn't simply decide on a whim to
forbid idolatry, theft, deceit, murder, envy, and human revenge.
Rather, His standards of human conduct spring from His very nature
as a good, loving, and life-giving God. Some behaviors are
wrong because they violate His inherent goodness-they are evil.
Some behaviors are wrong because they deny His compassionate
nature-they are hateful. Some behaviors are wrong because they
threaten life-they are death-dealing. And few behaviors lead to
death more profoundly than sexual immorality. Consider just two
present-day holocausts-abortion and the AIDS epidemic.

God would be untrue to
Himself and His own love if He didn't care about our impurity,
dishonesty, or cruelty. We can be glad that our Creator loves
us enough to be angry about conduct marked by evil, hatred, and
death, and that He is too good to be indifferent to it.

SEEING
GOD

* In Isaiah's reaction
to his vision of God (Isaiah
6:1-5), we
see something of God's inexpressible goodness.

* In God's reminder of
His fatherly action (Isaiah
1:2,4), we
see something of His heartbreak over our sin.

* In God's preliminary
judgments (Isaiah
1:5-8), we
see His reluctance to punish severely.

* In God's warnings
and repeated appeals (Isaiah
1:5-8), we
see His patient love

SEEING
OURSELVES

* In the unbelievable
cruelty of the Assyrians and Babylonians, we see the depths of human depravity.* In Judah's
ingratitude (Isaiah
1:2,4), we
see our own tendency to take God for granted.* In Judah's
compromise with paganism, we see our own tendency to serve two masters.* In the continued
rebellion of Judah, in spite of God's warning judgments, we see the
blinding power of sin.

THE
MAKER-CREATOR

God is the Creator of
everything that exists. This is declared in the opening verse
of the Bible and is repeated throughout the Scriptures. This
fact is a major theme in Isaiah. In addition to the many times
he talks about the things God has created, the prophet refers eight
times to God as "Maker"
and nine times as "Creator."
He reminds his readers that the God they are rejecting is:

(1) the Maker-Creator
of all existence, and(2) the Maker-Creator
of Israel as His special people.

The
Maker-Creator Of All Existence.
In drawing his vivid picture of the sharp contrast between lifeless
idols and Israel's living God, Isaiah eloquently portrays God in His
role as Creator: "Do
you not know? Have you not heard? .... He sits enthroned above
the circle of the earth.... He stretches out the heavens like a
canopy.... Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all
these? ... Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord
is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth"(Isaiah
40:21-22,26,28).

Isaiah makes these
statements to magnify the greatness of God. Reflecting on the
greatness of The One who spoke the worlds into existence has always
produced a sense of reverence and awe in believers. I recall
the time when my father and I looked at the sky on a bright cloudless
night. Like most children, I instinctively thought of God on
such an occasion. That night my spine tingled as I heard my
father quote the well-known words from Psalm
8:3-5.

"When
I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the
stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful
of him, and the son of man that You care for him? You made him
a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory
and honor"

I'm convinced that all
of us instinctively see the evidence of our Creator. Until we
learn to consciously suppress the knowledge of God, we cannot help
but think of Someone far greater than human beings when we gaze
upward at a cloudless night sky, look across the Grand Canyon, view
the surging expanse of the ocean sparkling under the sun, or listen
to the birds singing in the springtime. We lose this inborn
understanding through our contact with other unbelieving adults and a
deliberate suppression of our innate Godgiven awareness. That's
probably why many non-Christian scientists and intellectuals, though
wielding so much influence on our higher institutions of learning,
the news media, and the entertainment industry, have been able to
convince only about 10 percent of the public that everything exists
by chance plus time plus space.

Interestingly, the
more the institution of science learns about the complexity of life,
even at its simplest level, the more all of it looks designed.
A single cell is known to contain more information than all the
combined volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Evolutionist
Richard Dawkins, in his influential book The
Blind Watchmaker,
makes the observation that "biology
is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of
having been designed for a purpose"(cited
by Phillip Johnson in Objections Sustained, p.48).
Prominent British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle admits that when he
faced one of the many unexplainable coincidences in nature, his faith
in atheism "was
greatly shaken."
He makes this startling statement: "A
common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
super-intellect has monkeyed with physics"(cited
by Fred Heeren in Show Me God, p.227).

These complexities led
Carl Sagan and many other zealous unbelievers to speak in reverential
language about our "awesome
cosmos." But
in speaking this way they reveal that they are only a step away from
the ancient pagans who believed in an eternal, magical universe that
gave birth to the gods. Many scientific scholars are now saying
that life's genetic material may have been planted on earth by
superintelligent beings from a distant world. What a striking
similarity there is between these unseen aliens and the gods of the ancients!

How much more
reasonable it is to believe in the self-existent, personal God-the
purposeful Creator of
Isaiah 45:18.This is what the Lord
says-He who created the heavens, He is God; He who fashioned and made
the earth, He founded it; He did not create it to be empty, but
formed it to be inhabited-He says: I
am the Lord, and there is no other. "

Maker-Creator
Of Israel.
As the Maker-Creator of all things, God created the Gentile nations,
but Israel is His uniquely created people with whom He has a special relationship:

"I
am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel's Creator, your King"(Isaiah
43:15)."I
reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against Me"
(Isaiah 1:2)."Look
to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many"(Isaiah
51:2).

This call to look back
to Abraham and Sarah is significant. The Israelites knew that
Isacc's birth was a miracle, the truth so clearly stated many years
later in Hebrews
11:11-12.

By faith Abraham, even
though he was past age and Sarah herself was barren-was enabled to
become a father .... And so from this one man, and he as good as
dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. They also
knew that when God called out Abraham, He promised that "all
peoples on earth will be blessed through you"(Gen.
12:2-3).

Exodus
describes how this miraculously-born nation was miraculously
delivered from Egypt and miraculously preserved in the
wilderness. In addition to all this, the land God gave them was
perfectly adapted for their calling to be distinct and yet a witness
of His power. It is a secluded land hedged around by mountains,
desert, and water. Hostile neighbors surround it and isolate it
on all sides. Yet it is the "center
of the earth,"
the bridge between the ruling nations of the Middle East, the place
where three continents most nearly touch, the location from which it
is easy to reach the chief Gentile countries.Therefore Solomon, when
dedicating his temple, prayed that when "the foreigner" who
has heard about God comes to worship, he will respond so that "all
the peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You, as do Your
own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears
Your Name"(I
Kings. 8:43).

That this was God's
intention was clearly stated at Sinai when God called the nation to
be "a
kingdom of priests"(Ex.
19:5-6),
mediating God's blessings to her neighbors. But the nation,
through her continual disobedience, never fulfilled her calling.
And as we have seen, this pattern of rebellion was very much in
evidence during the time of Isaiah's ministry. In fact, at the
time of the vision recorded in chapter
6, God
informed Isaiah that the nation was so completely given over to pagan
practices that the people would not listen to him and would continue
on the path to destruction. But, as we'll see in the following
two sections of this article, He also led Isaiah to prophesy of
promised deliverance, restoration to their land, and salvation
through His "Servant."

In summary, Isaiah's
God is the almighty Maker and Creator of all that exists. He
has a right to expect worship and obedience from every person
everywhere. He brought all nations into being, but Israel is
His uniquely created people-His miracle nation. She has been
given a special place on earth and within mankind. And though
Israel has repeatedly failed to live up to her calling, Isaiah's God
has not given up on her. He will carry out all His plans for
her. As the Maker and Creator of everything that exists, He
unquestionably possesses the wisdom and power to bring about all the
plans He has for her and for all mankind

SEEING
GOD

*In Isaiah's eloquent
portrayal of God's role as Creator (Isaiah
40:21-25),
we catch a glimpse of His wisdom and power.*In God's revelation
of Himself through the created world, we see His desire to
communicate with us.*In God's creation of
Israel through the miraculous birth of Isaac, we see the power He
exerts in our own regeneration.*In God's placement of
Israel in Canaan, we see His loving purpose for all mankind.

SEEING
OURSELVES

* In mankind's
reluctance to see God as Maker-Creator, we see our prideful desire
for independence.

* In Israel's
rebellion after being made a special people, we see our own
reluctance to give ourselves completely to God.

* In our doubts and
desire for proofs that we didn't demand as children, we see our own
unwillingness to trust without external evidence.

* In our failure to
witness as we should, we see the deficiency of our love and gratitude.

THE
LORD ALMIGHTY

Throughout the book of Isaiah,
we see God as the One who controls all history. As such, God
is sometimes referred to as "the
Mighty One"
and "Sovereign
Lord,"
but most often (60
times) He
is the "Lord
Almighty"("Lord
of hosts" in NKJV).

When the Assyrian army
was poised to capture Jerusalem, Hezekiah prayed, "O
Lord Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, You
alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth"(Isaiah
37:16).
The One who created the heavens and "brings
out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name"(Isaiah
40:26) is
certainly qualified to control everything He wants to control.

In Isaiah we see God
boldly announcing His goal for Israel and all nations, and exercising
His sovereignty to bring about that which He has ordained.

The
God Of History Announces His Purposes.
As the Lord Almighty, God can confidently announce the details of His
purposes for Israel and the nations. He knows exactly where
history is going and how it will get there.

But God's optimistic
picture of how history will end contrasts sharply with the doomsday
portrait drawn by non-Christian futurists. Some believe that an
asteroid crashed into the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs some 60
million years ago, and they believe that the end for man will likely
come as the result of another
"deep impact."

Others see life as we
know it coming to an end through a nuclear holocaust, an
environmental disaster, an uncontrollable virus, or a series of
blunders on the part of scientists trying to play God.

Certainly it's
possible for an asteroid to crash into our planet, or that millions
may die from one or more of the causes mentioned above. But
history will not end that way!

Isaiah made it clear
that before God purifies the present earth system by fire (2
Pet. 3:10-13)
and ushers in "a
new heaven and a new earth"(Rev.
21), He
will bring about the following:

A transformed and
restored Israel
(Isaiah 54:1-17).

A rebuilt
Jerusalem as the center of worldwide worship and the capital city of
a government that will secure justice for all and peace between the
nations (Isaiah
2:1-5).;

A perfect Ruler
who is born as a child and a special gift from heaven called "Wonderful
Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"-clearly
the God-man Jesus Christ (Isaiah
9:1-7).

A dramatic removal
of the effects of the curse pronounced in Genesis
3:16-19.
This will affect the animal world (Isaiah
11:6-9),
cause deserts to become watered and lush (Isaiah
35:1; 41:19; 43:19-20; 51:3),
greatly increase the human lifespan
(Isaiah 65:20), and
ensure a good life of incredibly long duration to all the redeemed (Isaiah
65:21-23).

These are obviously
earthly conditions. The mention of animals, deserts, water, and
the presence of death at the end of a long life eliminate the
possibility that Isaiah was describing heaven. These prophecies
clearly predict a golden age that will exceed our fondest dreams, the
much-desired peaceable kingdom. The Lord Almighty has announced
its coming-and He cannot fail.

The
God Of The Nations Exercises His Sovereignty.
Throughout the book of Isaiah, we see God repeatedly pronouncing
judgment on Israel's neighbors and making bold predictions about
their future. The oracles against the nations (Isaiah
13-23)-Assyria,
Babylon, Philistia, Moab, Syria, Cush, Egypt, Edom, Arabia, and
Phoenicia-are a mixture of dire warnings and bright promises of a
coming Messiah. The apocalyptic section (Isaiah
24-27) portrays
the awesome judgments of the endtimes and the rejoicing that will
follow Israel's repentance and restoration. The next section (Isaiah
28-35)
begins with a description of the calamities that will fall on Israel
and Judah, continues with a rebuke of Judah for depending on an
alliance with Egypt, and closes with bright promises of endtime restoration.

God exercises the
control necessary to bring about His plan in at least three ways:

(1) He blinds the
minds of the rebellious and disobedient by making them slaves to
their own pride and self-will,(2) He brings into
power leaders who knowingly or unknowingly do His will, and(3) He miraculously
intervenes whenever He chooses.

God blinds the minds
of the rebellious and disobedient by making them slaves to their own
pride and self-will. Isaiah saw the rebellious nation of his day as
afflicted with "madness,
blindness, and confusion of mind"
just as God had threatened in
Deuteronomy 28:28,"Israel's
watchmen [spiritual leaders] are blind, they all lack knowledge"
(Isaiah 56:10).
Though they had heard God's message of warning and were surrounded by
enemies, they called out,
"Come ... let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of
beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better"
(Isaiah 56:12).
Isaiah described the situation this way: "Like
the blind we grope along the wall, feeling our way like men without eyes"(Isaiah
59:10).

Rebellion and
disobedience against God always brings spiritual blindness and mental
confusion! It did when men tried to frustrate God's plan by
building the tower of Babel (Gen.
11: 1-8).
It will in the endtime when world leaders gather in an attempt to
dethrone God (Rev.
16:12-14).
And it does today.

God used Pharaoh's
stubborn pride to display - -power (Ex.
7-11).
He used the stubborn pride of the Canaanites to set the stage for
their destruction by refusing to surrender to the Israelites even
though they knew what God had done to others who had attempted to
resist (Josh.
11:19-20).
Ahab's stubborn pride led him to listen to the false prophets rather
than God's servant, which brought about his violent death (2
Chron. 18:1-7).

The God of history has
demonstrated throughout the ages that when men rebel against Him He
sends them SPIRITUAL
BLINDNESS
and MENTAL
CONFUSION
by letting them become slaves to their pride and self-will.

God
brings into power leaders who knowingly or unknowingly do His will.
lsaiah's amazing prophecy that Cyrus would allow the Israelites to
return to their land after a time of captivity (Isaiah
44:28; 45:1)
illustrates the fact that the Lord Almighty sometimes controls
history by putting into place rulers who will, knowingly or
unknowingly, assist in the accomplishment of His purposes.

One of the amazing
elements in this prophecy is its chronology-more than 100 years
before the beginning of Israel's captivity in Babylon (586
BC) and
more than 150 years before Cyrus became the king of Persia (559
BC).
Isaiah had given Hezekiah the bad news that some of his descendants
would be taken as captives to Babylon (Isaiah
39:6-7).
The next eight chapters proclaim the good news that their coming
deliverance through Cyrus foreshadows a far greater deliverance and
restoration in the endtime. God referred to Cyrus as His "anointed"
through whom He would subdue nations, to whom He would reveal
Himself, and by whom the whole world would see something of His power
and glory. What's amazing is that there is no in-dication that
Cyrus ever acknowledged God as the one and only true God (Isaiah
45:1-7)!

God brought him to
this place of power and helped him because He could use him to
further His plans for Israel. Although Cyrus continued to
worship Marduk, he had qualities that fitted him for his role in
God's plan. His polytheism allowed him to hold a high regard
for Israel's God as a powerful deity. He also believed that
allowing captive people to return to their homeland was good policy
in his empire. He was God's man-chosen and placed in office to
help Him carry out His purposes for Israel.

God
miraculously intervenes when He chooses.
The fact that God sometimes intervenes supernaturally in the affairs
of nations is stated clearly throughout the Scriptures, but nowhere
more clearly than in Isaiah
36-37.
This narrative describes Jerusalem as helpless before the Assyrian
army that had come to capture her. The Assyrian general sent an
insolent letter to Hezekiah, ridiculing the idea that Israel's God
could deliver the city. Hezekiah spread out the letter before
the Lord Almighty and prayed. The next morning, the Israelites
on the wall protecting the city looked out and saw that except for
the 180,000 soldiers lying dead in the field, the camp was
empty. God had supernaturally intervened.

Some scholars have
suggested that the bubonic plague accounted for all these
deaths. This is obvious conjecture, of course. But if
true, the timing would still point to God. The fact is that God
can supernaturally intervene without performing an obvious
miracle. As the Lord Almighty, for example, He can control the
weather and make it a significant factor in time of war. After
a battle in which heavy rain or bitter cold helps a smaller force to
win, only believers would see the hand of God. And even then we
ourselves would be unable to determine the extent to which God's
supernatural power was involved. Material events always appear
to material beings as having a material cause.

In summary, though all
the names of God are used to denote His control of history, the name "Lord
Almighty"
calls special attention to this truth. God can announce His
goal for history and predict the way He will bring it about because
as the Lord Almighty He has the wisdom and power to overrule the best
laid plans of His enemies and work out His sovereign will.

SEEING
GOD

* In God's
announcement of His plans and purposes, we see His complete control
of all things.

*In God's endtime
scenario, we see His goodness.

* In Isaiah's prophecy
about Cyrus more than 150 years in advance of his reign, we see God's
perfect foreknowledge.

* In God's miraculous
deliverance of Judah from Assyria, we see His response to earnest prayer.

SEEING
OURSELVES

*In the response of
Israel's watchmen to God's warnings (Isaiah
56:10-12),
we see the foolish arrogance that resides within all of us.

* In Cyrus' failure to
abandon his pagan worship, even after seeing and acknowledging the
power of God, we see the blinding power of false religion.

* In the helplessness
of the Jerusalem inhabitants in the face of the armies of Assyria, we
see our own helplessness in the face of the powers of evil.

* In the sudden death
of 180,000 Assyrian soldiers, we see our vulnerability in the
presence of God.

THE
SAVIOR-REDEEMER

When I was in my
teens, I heard a story that had a great impact on me. A
young Police officer was marooned by an unusually heavy
snowstorm and eventually found dead in a remote cabin. On the
table near his frozen body was a note:
"Dear Mother, when I was home I told you that I didn't want to
go to church because I didn't believe in God. Now that I am
dying, I am haunted by the question, Will God forgive me for all my sins?"

The dominant fear for
most people when they are facing death is not the fear of non-existence,
it's the fear of punishment for sin. Even the law of karma in
Hinduism, which offers no hope of forgiveness, acknowledges the
reality of guilt and punishment by teaching that the greater our
sinfulness in this life, the more undesirable will be our next reincarnation.

The fact is that most
religions, even the pantheistic Eastern belief systems, enslave their
adherents to sacrificial rites and ceremonial rituals aimed at
appeasing their angry gods. God, it seems, has built into all
people everywhere an innate conviction that they need a redeemer, a savior.

It's evident that
Isaiah was aware of this need in that he referred to God as "Savior"
eight times and as "Redeemer"
thirteen times. Amazingly, in this he paints a comprehensive
portrait of both Christ's first coming and of His return for the
restoration of Israel. But he does not acknowledge the time
element between the two comings. Moreover, most of these
prophecies are so intermingled with the warnings, assurances, and
exhortations Isaiah addressed to his contemporaries that we would not
understand them clearly if we did not possess the information we have
in the New Testament. This explains why even the apostles were
confused and bewildered when Jesus went to the cross. We will
see this as we survey some of the high points in Isaiah's portrayal
of Christ as the Savior of sinners and the Redeemer of national Israel.

Christ's
Coming As Savior Of Sinners.
The details of Isaiah's predictions about the coming of Jesus as the
Savior of sinners span the entire time of our Lord's sojourn on earth.

A
prediction of the preparatory ministry of John the Baptist(Isaiah.
40:3-5, Matt. 3:3; Mark. 1:3; Luke. 3:4-6).
Isaiah promised the Israelites that the day would come when God
would remove all obstacles to their return from the Babylonian
captivity he had predicted. The Gospel writers present John the
Baptist as announcing a spiritual deliverance far more than the
deliverance from Babylon.

A
prediction of the virgin birth of Jesus(Isaiah.
7.14; Matt. 1:23).
God sent Isaiah to Judah's king Ahaz to assure him that he had
nothing to fear from the alliance of the ten-tribed northern kingdom
and Syria and gave as a sign the promise, "The
virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will
call Him Immanuel"(Isaiah
7:14).

The prophecy goes on
to say that very early in the life of this child, both Syria and the
northern kingdom would be laid waste (Isaiah
7:15-17).Isaiah
8:1-4
tells us that this part of the prophecy was fulfilled shortly after
lsaiah's marriage to the woman to whom he was engaged when he met
with Ahaz. She bore a son named Maher-Shalat-Hash-Baz who was
still a small child when both the northern tribes and Syria were
defeated by the Assyrians. Matthew tells us that the pregnancy
of Mary before she and Joseph had come together was the ultimate
fulfillment of Isaiah
7:14.
Additionally, only Jesus could fulfill the meaning of the name "Immanuel"("God
with us")
in its full expression.

A
description of the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ (Isaiah
9.6-7; Luke. 1:26-35).
Isaiah declared that a child would be born as a gift from God and
that "Mighty
God"
and "Everlasting"
would be among the titles He would bear. The gospel of Luke
gives us the angel's message to Mary, explaining how this combination
of deity and humanity would be fulfilled in the Son she was to bear.

A
description of the vicarious suffering, death, burial, resurrection,
and exaltation of Jesus Christ as the suffering Servant (Isaiah
52:13-53:12; the entire New Testament).
Beginning in chapter
42 of
Isaiah, we find many references to the "Servant
of the Lord."
From chapters
42-48 the "Servant"
is sometimes Israel or a godly remnant with indirect references to
Jesus Christ.

But in chapters
49-53, the "Servant"
is clearly the Lord Jesus:

*The Servant's extreme
humiliation through a beating that grotesquely disfigures Him will be
followed by such exaltation that men will bow in awe before Him (Isaiah
52:13-15; Phil. 2:1-11).

*The Servant will be
despised and rejected because His appearance will differ from Jewish
Messianic expectations
(Isaiah 53:1-3).

*The Servant will
suffer and die a violent death for our transgressions as the Lord
lays on Him the suffering we deserve (Isaiah
53:4-6).

*The Servant will
suffer without retaliation even though He is innocent of all the
charges made against Him (Isaiah
53:7; 1 Pet. 2:21-23).

*The Servant will die
with the wicked (plural the two criminals crucified with Him) but
will be buried with the rich (singular-the
grave of Joseph of Arimathea in which His body was laid)(Isaiah
53:9; Mt. 27:57-60).

*The Servant will be "crushed"
(die through the most intense mental and physical suffering imaginable)
to provide a once-and-for-all sacrifice for sin (Isaiah
53: 10; 2 Cor. 5:2 1 ).

*The Servant will live
after dying, justify many, and take His place of highest exaltation (Isaiah
53:10-12; Mt. 8:17; Acts 2:29-36: Phil. 2:9-11).

The New Testament
contains many more allusions to lsaiah's prophecies about Jesus
Christ. When we take them seriously, we cannot help but marvel
that these prophecies were written about 700 years before they were fulfilled.

Christ's
Return As Redeemer Of Israel.
Nothing in Isaiah suggests that a lengthy span of time will separate
Christ's coming as Savior from sin and His return as Redeemer of
Israel. But both of these comings are clearly in view
throughout. Because the prophecies about Israel's repentance
and restoration were not fulfilled at Christ's first coming, it's
necessary to look for a fulfillment at a later time. These
endtime prophecies, intertwined with messages applicable to Isaiah's
contemporaries and predictions of the first coming, include grim
warnings of endtime judgments and bright promises of future worldwide blessings.

Serious
Warnings Of Endtime Judgments

* God warns Jerusalem
that He will give her "the
cup of His wrath.... the goblet that makes men stagger"(Isaiah
51:17).

* God (speaking
in retrospect after the endtime great tribulation)
portrays Himself as treading a winepress with His garments made red
by the blood of His enemies. This symbolizes His trampling of
the nations in His anger (Isaiah
63:3-6).

* God speaks of a
coming "Day
of the Lord"
in which He will cause the sun, the moon, the stars, and their
constellations to be darkened (Isaiah
13:1,10),
with stars failing like withered leaves (Isaiah
34:4) and
the earth trembling under His wrath (Isaiah
13:13; 24:18).

* God will devastate
the earth, causing Babylon and Edom to become places of abject
desolation for the rest of earth's history (Isaiah
24:1-13,19-20; 34:2,5,10).

Bright
Promises Of Future Worldwide Blessing.
The judgments of the endtime Day of the Lord will be followed by
unparalleled blessing for Israel and the nations-which we depicted earlier.

* Israel will
experience a restoration beyond any in her previous history, a
regathering foreshadowed by previous returns (Isaiah
27:12-13; 40:10; 49:22; 52:10).

* God, in the person
of the exalted Christ, will return to Zion as her Redeemer and as
King over the saved Jewish community (Isaiah
59:20-21; Rom. 11:26).

As members of the True
Body of Christ, who believe in His resurrection and ascension to
heaven, we can anticipate His return with the assurance that all God
has promised He will bring to pass.

SEEING
GOD

* In God's provision
of a way by which He can righteously forgive sinners, we see His
wisdom and love.

* In God's promise of
a virgin-born divine-human Redeemer whom He would make the substitute
sacrifice for our sins (Isaiah
53), we
see the depth of His love.

* In God's grim
warnings of endtime judgments (Isaiah
13:13; 51:17; 63:3-6),
we see that His holiness makes it impossible to leave sin unpunished.

* In God's promises of
Israel's conversion and restoration, we see the triumph of His grace.

SEEING
OURSELVES

* In the fact that
people everywhere have an innate conviction that they need a
redeemer, we see why all who fail to repent are "without
excuse."

* In the terrible
suffering that Messiah endured when God laid on Him the penalty for
our sins, we see the depths of our depravity.

* In the fact that God
must use a time of wrath to bring Israel to repentance, we see our
own stubborn pride.

* In the exaltation of
Jesus Christ during the Kingdom Age, we see something of the
blessedness that awaits us as His co-regents.

WHY
WE NEED TO KNOW GOD

Ninety percent of the
public believes in the existence of a God. But which god? The
god of this earth (Satan)
or the supreme God, the creator of all things. Most of us have a
shallow understanding of who the true God is and what He is
like. He's infinitely better than any of us think He is, yet
He's not like a big-hearted physician or a doting and kind-hearted
-loving grandfather. The typical view held, unfortunately, by the
majority of professing, deceived church people. He is a God of
Judgement, of Correction, of Discipline, of Condemnation and Punishment.

Very few of us have
learned to trust the True God for Salvation, to pray to the True God
for health and happiness, to give to the True church so that people
may come to the True Christ, to be involved in True church
activities, and to anticipate being with the True God forever in
heaven. But too few of us discover a profound appreciation for
the great biblical truths of His character and His personality.
The result of this small view of God is that we are deceived,
blinded, by the god of this earth, Satan. We have been knowingly or
unknowingly substituting our own false and humanistic gospels of
worldliness, business, pleasure and entertainment for real faith, for
real obedience and for True worship. In doing so, the majority
live almost on the same level as those who don't know the True Christ
and all will ultimately share the same fate, an eternity in Hell.

Proverbs
9:10
states, "The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the
Holy One is understanding."
We can't begin to know the True God without the "fear
of the Lord,"
and we can't truly fear Him unless we understand who He is and what
He is like.

Seeing the True God
and seeing ourselves in His presence has been the goal of this
article. We have seen our accountability to Him as "the
Holy One of Israel,"
His right as "Creator-Maker"
to want the best for us, His power as "Lord
Almighty"
to accomplish all His purposes, and His grace as "Savior-Redeemer"
by which He rescues us from real danger. Properly understood,
these truths lead us to the greatest of all discoveries: to know the
True God, to live in sincere obedience to Him and to truly love Him forever.

Let
Us Pray Together--

PRAY:
"God be merciful to me a sinner. Receive me now for Christ's
sake. Cleanse me from my sin by your precious blood, shed on the
cross for me; lead me to be Baptized and fill me with your Holy
Spirit. Teach me to pray each day; to read Your will for my life from
your word, the Bible; and help me to worship and serve You in the
fellowship of your church. I thank you Lord Jesus Christ. AMEN!